[signaru]

Have read the first few chapters and it expects that you either read the accompanying source code or implement your own and pass the tests. The pseudo code presented in the book often look like function calls with the inner details not there in the book. Furthermore, as already pointed out in another comment, the available implementation is in OCaml, which is probably not something many C programmers have experience with.

Nevertheless, I think I'm learning more from this book than most other books I've tried before that are far more theoretical or abstract. I'm still eager to reach the chapter on implementing C types. I think it's a good book, but it requires more effort than something like Crafting Interpreters or Writing a Compiler/Interpreter in Go, while also covering topics not in those books.

[wrycoder]

Nand2Tetris is also like that - they provide an outline and tests, but you have to do the work. And, having the implementation language be different from the target language reduces confusion.

Plus, you get to become proficient in OCaml, which is a pretty good language.

[kragen]

that's a good point—it was pretty confusing when i wrote ur-scheme in scheme, or stoneknifeforth in stoneknifeforth, because i kept getting confused about which level of the language i was changing things in

[myko]

I thought this book looked neat but closed the tab before reading the comments here, and after this one decided to go ahead and buy it. Sounds really fun!